By: Curtis Sindrey (@SindreyCurtis) –
Jenny Lewis (left) and Ben Gibbard (right) of The Postal Service. (Photo: Stephen McGill/Aesthetic Magazine Toronto)
Nostalgia ran high throughout the Air Canada Centre last night as newly reunited indie electronic pop duo The Postal Service brought their decade-old album, Give Up, to Toronto.
The ACC’s “theatre” configuration was barely half full when the duo of Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Jimmy “Dntel” Tamborello (joined on tour by Mynabirds’ Laura Burhenn on backing vocals and keyboards and former Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis on guitar and vocals) took the stage and jumped right into Give Up’s opening track “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”, which had Gibbard dancing as awkwardly as Death Cab mega-fan Seth Cohen would have. However, with Lewis’ and Burhenn’s looped vocals and Gibbard’s distinctive voice, it made for a strong introduction.
“This place is a little big, right?” Gibbard said towards the end of their performance. Gibbard echoed what many fans have had on their mind ever since Gibbard and co. announced their reunion tour earlier this year. The Postal Service isn’t a band that should have played a venue as big as the Air Canada Centre, theatre setting or not. Instead, why not play a night or two at a more modest venue like Kool Haus or Sony Centre, which wouldn’t have left so many empty seats.
Throughout their 17-song set, Gibbard and Lewis acted the parts of the flirtatiously coy boy and girl to perfection as they mimed the parts of our early love lives where we likely had their music playing.
Besides playing Give Up in its entirety, which has since become a cult-classic, the quartet also dropped in a few covers and b-sides including “A Tattered Line of String” and “There’s Never Enough Time”, along with a spirited rendition of fellow Washington natives Beat Happening’s “Our Secret”, which featured Lewis on drums, from their 1985 self-titled debut album and a cover of Dntel’s (Tamborello’s other project) “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan,” which was the first song that featured a Gibbard/Tamborello collaboration and was on this night accompanied by what sounded like a therapy session where a woman spilled her guts to everyone in attendance.
During the inevitable performance of “Such Great Heights”, it sparked an arena-wide sing-a-long, with Gibbard noting “10 years is a lifetime”, noting the song’s age, but this flew over the heads of the majority of the devotees in the crowd who swooned to Gibbard’s soft-spoken singing.
“We Will Become Silhouettes” saw Gibbard jump onto a drum kit at the back of the stage to conduct a bombastic drum workout that had him competing with the track’s happy-go-lucky melody.
Despite “Sleeping In” uninspired lyrics, it was when Tamborello joined in on backing vocals during the song’s refrain of “don’t wake me I plan on sleeping in”, that garnered a roar from the crowd for the often silent producer.
Before jolting into “Natural Anthem”, Gibbard admitted, “while The Postal Service has existed for 10 years, this band has only existed for three months”, but despite the short amount of time, the quartet has succeeded in configuring their introverted synth-pop and making it arena-ready.
By the twilight of their set, they transformed the ACC from an electropop show to an all-night rave with tracks like “Tattered Line of String”, and “Natural Anthem” and its booming beats that rattled the hockey arena.
As the 8-bit melody of “Brand New Colony” echoed through the ACC, which concluded their set, Gibbard assured the crowd that “we’ll see you in other combinations later on”, and whether that means that this tour is a final farewell is anyone’s guess.
Openers Mates of State exuded energy and a youthful charm throughout their short six-song set. From playing a healthy mix of tracks from their last seven studio albums, including “My Only Offer”, and “The Re-Arranger”, from 2008’s Re-Arrange Us, along with a new song that drummer Jason Hammel says that they “finished this week”, it effectively continued their already-established sound that clashes synth-pop driven melodies with pounding drum beats.
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